When Did You Last See Your Father?
By: Amy Nicholson
Strangers adored Arthur (Jim Broadbent); his family cringed at his loud mouth and gloating need to put one over The Man. Anand Tucker’s assured, decades-spanning drama is a boy’s club drama about Arthur’s strained relationship with son Blake (Colin Firth), who as a boy (Bradley Johnson) and teen (Matthew Beard) would rather his dad died than embarrass him in front of another girl. Now, he is dying, and true to form it’s on his own terms—he’s weak and beaming beatifically as though St. Peter is giving him a high five for being awesome. The teaser titular question refers to Colin’s puzzlement over whom he’s saying goodbye to: the bastard he remembers, or an old man he’s never really known. Even bedridden, Broadbent walks away with the film; his son’s never outshone him and Firth can’t do much besides sulk. As the widow-to-be, Juliet Stevenson is quiet with a steel center that can neither best her husband nor be broken by him. Based on Blake Morrison’s memoirs—wrested into a screenplay by David Nicholls—Tucker’s unsentimental eulogy keeps its emotion in check behind the moody haze of memory. (Amy Nicholson)
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